Connect
by Last of the Lilac Wine
Summary: He was a wild card. She was a control freak. He was ruthless. She was ruthlessly efficient. They shouldn't have worked in so many ways - but they did. Set during Season 4.
1. Chapter 1: Cornfields

**CONNECT**

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**CHAPTER 1: **CORNFIELDS

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Farah was on her knees with her arms twisted painfully behind her back. A gun was pressed into the back of her head.

They were in a cornfield – she'd run into it because she thought she'd be able to lose them among the tall canes – but that hadn't been the case; they'd fanned out across the expanse of the field and followed, simply waiting for her to tire.

She hadn't been pushed or forced onto her knees; she had fallen onto them out of sheer exhaustion. An act of submission. _I give up. _

A pale orange dust hung in the air from where they'd scuffed up the cracked and broken ground. The corn around her was already dead and wilting with no one to water it, though it grew again each season regardless of the apocalypse. Farah would have smiled. The corn reminded her of her father – not _of _him- but of the old Afghan stories he used to tell her and her brothers from his home country. Stories of families trekking across desserts with one mule and wizened men battling demons; stories with messages of faith and truth and love.

He would have loved to make a story out of the corn around her. Something about the enduring nature of the earth or –

"You ain't got anythin' else? No food? No group?" one of the men grunted, after patting her down. They'd taken her rucksack, her gun from the waistband of her jeans and her two knives.

Farah gritted her teeth. The back of her shirt was wet with sweat, her thick, black hair had partly fallen out of its bun in the chase and now fell like a sweeping curtain so that she could barely see her captors. She twisted her head to look up at the one who had spoken and the gun pressed more firmly into the back of her skull. "I told you, that is everything I have. I have no group."

The man seemed to be chewing a wad of tobacco and spat a dark clump of it into the ground at his feet. He made a clicking noise in the back of his throat and one of his friends threw Farah's handgun to him. He ejected the 20 round drum magazine and inspected it. Nearly full. He squinted up at the sky. "We're gonna kill you now," he said, without apology. "It's better that way. You wouldn't last long with out your supplies."

Farah found herself nodding, staring down at the cauterized ground at her feet. Her arms were aching.

She thought about the thirty two years she had been alive; she thought about those thirty two years ending in a deserted corn field. No wind. Her body falling into the dust in front of her with a bullet hole in the back of her head and the men walking away and leaving her there.

"Just do it," she croaked out, the inside of her mouth bone dry and rough like sandpaper from dehydration. "Just –"

The clatter of machine gun fire and the sharp, powerful snap of a handgun drowned out her words along with the roaring of an engine.

They didn't look like anybody you would expect to meet at the end of the world. Not grim-faced or hopeless, but more alive than anyone Farah had ever seen in months.

By the time the men holding her understood they were under attack, a huge army truck crashed through the corn, flattening it to the ground like a hurricane. It crashed into the leader at speed and he rolled up and over the windscreen like a plastic dummy. The other two tried to return fire - their rounds barely chipped the paintwork – and the third turned the fled.

The bullets tore into all of them, shredding up their skin and bones. Flecks of blood sprayed Farah's face.

And it was all over in seconds, leaving a loud ringing in her ears. She was numb with shock, still knelt on the ground. Her rucksack and gun had fallen only a few inches from her.

"Yee-ha!" a bear of a man with fiery orange hair and mustache jumped out of the truck with a heavy thud, a machine gun the size of a bazooka canted lazily over one shoulder. "I do love me a good shut-up."

Farah scrambled for her gun and flicked off the safety with a practiced speed. She stood. "Don't you dare come any closer."

By now another man – this one shorter, with greasy dark hair – and a lithe, athletic looking woman had stepped out of the truck, too, slamming their doors loudly.

"You know, honey" said the first man, casually. "I _really _don' like being threatened. We ain't here to hurt you."

"I'm expected to believe you're saving my life out of the kindness of your heart?!" Farah snapped, sarcastically, not lowering her gun. She still believed in the innate goodness of humanity, but these people _definitely _did not look like _the innate goodness of humanity_.

He snorted, toeing a body over with his boot and bending to pick up the shot gun lying next to it. He examined it, and then nodded, throwing it back to the woman. "Aw hell no. We were just driving by and saw this shit going down - we kinda thought we'd join in just for the hell of it."

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**A/N **So, what do you think? My fics' generally tend to have longer chapters, but I wanted to keep these shorter so that I can update more frequently. They should be around 700-1,500 words.

Please **review **if you're interested!

_Last Of The Lilac Wine_


	2. Chapter 2: White Flag

**CONNECT**

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**CHAPTER 2: **WHITE FLAG

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The woman offered her a dirty white rag so she could mop up the blood on her face. Farah hesitated, then lowered her gun cautiously.

"Thank you," she said, taking the rag but not using it. Her eyes surveyed the two other men, still not quite sure what to think: the one with black hair honestly looked _bored _and the other was rocking backwards and forwards on the balls of his feet, looking at her with a slight grin on his face. "Okay, just - just _who_ are you people, exactly?" Farah demanded sharply and somewhat exasperatedly. "Seriously," she added, as if worried they might crack a joke.

It all _felt _like one big joke. These people just…just didn't seem _real. _These people who did things _just for the hell of it_, who rode in and shot four men and then stood there with them lying in the dust like it was nothing.

The hand holding her gun trembled perceptibly and Farah grit her teeth once more and lifted her chin. _Do not show weakness._

"Well," said the big man, pacing back and forth in front of her like a drill sergeant. (Which, she thought, taking in his attire, he probably _was_.), "that kinda depends."

"On?!"

"We just tidied a big-ass mess up for you here lady."

She raised one eyebrow. "I didn't _ask _you to do this."

"So you wanted to end up like Fido over here?" he asked and kicked a man's head so that it rolled to display a face torn up by bullets. Farah looked away.

She took a deep breath and placed her hands against her temples. It was almost impossible to think clearly when her ears were still ringing with residue gun-shots. "I'm very grateful for what you did," she said, levelly – then realized it sounded slightly sarcastic. "I am. Truly." Farah tucked her gun back into the waistband of her jeans and then, with a small hesitation, wiped the blood off of her face with the white bit of cloth. Her eyes fell on the truck, parked behind them. It looked more like a tank then a car and had dark, smoked windows and all-terrain wheels. Only tiny pock-marks on the sheet metal gave any indication it had been shot at. "Where are you all headed exactly?" she asked, with the handkerchief still on her forehead.

The woman shifted her weight from foot to foot. She looked at the ginger haired man. "Nowhere."

"What? You two ex-military and you're driving round in some kind of tank?" Farah was curious now. She allowed herself, for a brief moment, to imagine a military safe zone deep in the Rockies or some place similar. A place that was _safe_. But even thinking it felt like a dream. Nowhere was safe. "Honestly. You're army. Where are you going?" Her gaze shifted to the silent, bored looking man who stood a little behind them. She balled up the rag in her hand and tossed it back to the woman. "Something to do with him?"

The woman looked at the ground, shaking her head and smiling. "You're sharp, girl, I'll give you that." She muttered something to herself in Spanish. Then she looked at the bigger man, nodding towards Farah. "Well, you wanna tell her?" she asked. Pissy.

He didn't say anything immediately - just looked at her with his thumbs tucked into his belt loops. It should have been a relaxed gesture but it wasn't.

Him looking at her like that unnerved Farah. It unnerved her in the way things she didn't really understand unnerved her. When he walked up to her – right up to her – she was honestly intimidated.

She wished she hadn't put her gun away.

"Now, I'd say I'm about hittin' close to the truth when I think you ain't got no group. No people. Not anymore, leastways."

"You could be."

"I'd say I am."

Farah tried to control her rapidly beating heart. He was speaking leisurely. Slowly. His ice blue eyes felt like they were cutting into her and physically, he completely dwarfed her. She tried to make up for that by matching him toe-to-toe – replicating his relaxed posture by shoving her hands in the back pockets of her jeans.

He sniffed and looked over his shoulder at his two companions. "You wanna know where we're goin'? We're headin' to DC. You come with us – well then, sure. But you best not slow us down or get in our way. You do, we either drop you or kill you. Depends how pissed off you made me. Got it?"

Farah blinked, indignant, but then realized his offer – which had caught her off guard with its directness - made sense. It would have come to this anyway. She would have asked to go with them sooner or later because they were her best bet for survival. He was just saving on time.

There was the static sound of a radio and then a garbled voice through it. The man stepped away from her - and Farah abruptly felt like she could _breath _again - as his female companion lent over one of the bodies and rummaged in their shirt pocket. She withdrew the radio and listened carefully for a second and then her face tightened. "There are more of them," she said. "We should go."

Obediently, the dark haired man popped the truck door and climbed in. The other man moved to fill the trunk with the scavenged weapons - slinging the car keys to the woman, who jogged round to the driver's side.

"Get in," she said to Farah, holding the door open expectantly. But Farah paused, looking down at the four bodies lying in the orange dirt. Some of the blood had already dried black in the baking heat.

She wondered how human life could have decreased so much in value when so few of the living were left. She also wondered who, exactly, she was getting in with here. Whether this was smart.

Farah turned her back on the dead men who had tried to kill her, her face stony, and got into the truck. They reversed back through a trail of crushed corn and pulled back out onto the highway.

"I forgot," said Farah after a while, leaning forwards between the two front seats. "My name is Farah. Wahidi."

"Rosita." The dark-haired woman said, glancing at her and laughing slightly as she saw that Farah had offered her her hand. She reached her left arm across the wheel and shook it. "And this is Abraham," (she indicated to the ginger-haired man next to her), "and Eugene." (The man wedged into one of the considerably smaller back two seats beside Farah.)

"So - you don't mind me coming with you?"

"Well, you know what they say," said Abraham, rolling his eyes as he cranked down the window, letting the roar of the truck engine in. "Two's company. Three's a party."

"Last time I checked," Farah yelled, over the noise, "there were four of us."

"Hon, Eugene don't count."

Farah raised both eyebrows and contented herself with staring at the road that unfurled before them, elbows rested on Abraham and Rosita's seats. The road to Washington. She peeked at the man called Eugene over her shoulder surreptitiously and realized he had yet to speak in her presence. Right then, he was merely staring out the window. The same bored expression on his face.

Something told her, however, that it was the complete opposite of Abraham's words that was true.

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**A/N **Thank you for your reviews and follows! I find Abraham such a fascinating character, and though I haven't read the comics, I can't wait to see what Season 5 (hopefully) discloses about his backstory.

Please _review _if you would like to read more, or if you have any suggestions for Farah and Abraham's relationship!

_Last Of The Lilac Wine_


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